The Ten Thousand

Author – Paul Kearney

Paperback
Pages: 480 pages
Publisher: Solaris
Release Date: August 26, 2008
ISBN-10: 1844165736
ISBN-13: 978-1844165735

For the sake of full transparency, let me start this review by saying that I only made it about halfway through The Ten Thousand before putting it down for good. Because of this, I’ve struggled over the last several days about how to write this review, or if I even should. The difficulty comes from the fact that despite my inability to invest myself enough in the story to feel compelled to continue through to the end, I could see so many flashes of brilliance throughout that it makes me wonder if maybe I’m the problem and not the novel.

That’s obviously a suspect statement to make in a review, so let me explain myself: part of my issue, which isn’t even close to a factor under Kearney’s control, is that I’ve begun to feel over-saturated with Fantasy – 15 or so years of reading little other than the genre can do that to you. Instead I’ve been reading a lot of Science Fiction and feel the pendulum of my moods swinging that way over the last several weeks. I feel, as unfortunate as it sounds, that I just wasn’t in the right place to be stepping into Kearney’s bloody, visceral world.
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